A front structure for a vehicle such as an automobile of this kind is provided with a front bumper fascia disposed in a vehicle front portion, an engine hood having a front end portion opposing to an upper end portion of the front bumper fascia, and front fenders extending from widthwise both side edges of the engine hood. The front bumper fascia includes a fascia base disposed in the vehicle front portion and provided with a front grille opening portion in a widthwise center portion, a front grille disposed in the front grille opening portion, and head lamp units disposed in right and left end portions of the fascia base and spaced from the front grille.
Such a vehicle front structure which enables the head lamp unit to be efficiently cooled and accomplish the both of a reduction in the front-rear length of the head lamp unit and required cooling performance is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2017-81291 (hereinafter referred to as “Patent Document 1”).
Specifically, the head lamp unit recited in Patent Document 1 includes a housing formed with a unit case opened upward and a cover member which closes an upper opening portion of the unit case, and a lamp main body housed in the housing. The housing has a front opening portion which is opened to the front of the vehicle and a rear opening portion which is opened to the rear of the vehicle, and the lamp main body is disposed between the front opening portion and the rear opening portion. With such configuration, as the vehicle runs, running wind flows from the front opening portion to the rear opening portion, so that the running wind efficiently cools the lamp main body.
In the front structure of the vehicle as recited in Patent Document 1, the lamp main body is disposed at a position closer to a widthwise outer side of the front opening portion, and spaced away from a widthwise outer edge of the front opening portion toward a widthwise inner side. This disposing of the lamp main body enables efficient light-up of the front of the vehicle and improves the design of the vehicle in a front view.
However, in the case that the lamp main body is disposed at a position closer to the outer side in the front opening portion in this manner, the lamp main body has a difference in the cooling efficiency between an inner side portion and an outer side portion of the lamp main body in the vehicle width direction, so that the lamp main body cannot be effectively cooled in its entirety.
Specifically, because the front opening portion of the housing has a smaller opening area on the widthwise outer side of the lamp main body than an opening area on the inner side, the running wind has different flows between on the outer side and on the inner side of the lamp main body in the vehicle width direction, so that the cooling efficiency of the lamp main body by running wind taken in through the front opening portion becomes different between on the outer side and on the inner side in the vehicle width direction, resulting in failing to efficiently cool the lamp main body.